Pecifiers and Autism

My son falls on the Autism spectrum and NEVER took a pacifier. We worked hard and encourgaged him to talk for the longest time getting no response. Finally at about age 3 he picked up a few signs (sign language) and at about 4 started talking. I don’t think any parent wants their child to withdrawl into their own world and most are severly distressed when it ocurrs.

My youngest sucked a pacifier for 15mos. you couldn’t get him to stop talking if you tried. He talked to people, the windows of the car, the seats, himself. Even before he had all the sounds, it was like living with someone who spoke a foreign language that you only knew every third word. He has adhd, had an articulation problem that was addressed in speech therapy during the preschool years, he is an honor roll student in the 6 th grade. No autism.
Amy

Steve,

I would disagree with this premise for a couple of reasons. First of all, it is natural for babies to have a sucking reflex. If you do not give a pacifier, they will use fingers or something else. Since a pacifier is easier to discard than a thumb, most people agree that the pacifier is preferable. Not to mention the orthodontic disadvantages of thumb sucking. Babies have been using pacifiers for far longer than autism has been on the increase. So I’d say there is probably zero correlation. But that’s just my opinion.

Janis

All three of my kids used pacifiers—up until 2 or 3. None are autistic.
I certainly don’t think there is a relationship. I was going to ditch the pacifier with the third one—tired of looking for the darn things for older two. But when he wanted to nurse constantly, I decided a plastic pacifier was better than me!!

Beth

That was just my point. What you are saying to the kid is, “Go and play with yourself.”

Well, Steve, just what is your solution for satisfying your baby’s sucking reflex? I presume being a male you wouldn’t be able to help with the breastfeeding.

Janis

I don’t understand. The baby was four weeks old. No four week old baby will entertain him or herself.

Beth

I see you don’t know much about Autism. Autism is a nuerogically based disorder it is not caused because someone told or indicated to the child to shut up. Autism is a multifactoral disorder with many areas of defict. The child may experience difficulties in both verbal and non-verbal communication, have sensory type issues, social skills deficits, fine and gross motor issues, attentional issues, ect. The Austism spectrum disorders has a wide range of presentations with some individuals effected severly and others only moderately or mildly, the symptom presentation does not have to be the same across groups, all social economic groups are represented. The research has proven that Autism and its cousins are not caused by bad parenting but by a variety of neurologically based problems. Autisms causes, presentations, ect are so wide that no 2 children respond to a treatment the same. Some benefit from special diets, some from sensory intergration training, AIT, ABBA, music therapy, ect. The most effective intervention to date has been early identification with early intervention. Intense teaching of skills with repeated (many times) trials of the same skill over and over. These students are not hopeless causes, they can be reached. A team approach with parents, teachers, and the community working together provide a good outcome for these students. Before coming to this board and spouting off why don’t you go educate yourself first about the topic you plan on talking about.

First of all I would recognize the fact that the sucking instinct is related to hunger - and I wouldn’t accept all that nonsense about a baby’s need to suck on anything for the sake of sucking. Secondly, I would assume that the baby either hasn’t had enough to eat (and would turn him over to my wife) or give him a bottle. The defining difference here is that the baby is being held and communicated with when fed by nursing or by bottle. But to shove something in his mouth to stop him from crying, to me, is a way of saying, “Don’t bother me - shut up and do your own sucking out of my way.” Someone on a further post mentioned that high “interaction” is a recommended treatment for autism (the kind where the child is withdrawn into himself). Maybe they just needed that high interaction during the nursing stage rather than to be put in a corner with a plastic tube in their mouth. Maybe they needed some human stimulation that would attract their attention away from wanting to suck if they weren’t hungry. It’s in this stage of development where habits and human relationships are formed. Why plug up a baby’s mouth rather than interact and cummunicate? Is the pacifier really for the baby or for the parent?

…

Steve,

Here are some facts about pacifiers from the American Academy of pediatrics:

http://www.medem.com/MedLB/article_detaillb.cfm?article_ID=ZZZQ4JXWQ7C&sub_cat=11

Janis

In comment to Steve H.’s response:
“I wouldn’t accept all that nonsense about a baby’s need to suck on anything for the sake of sucking”

Someone should have told my baby that dinner wasn’t coming for about two months because my baby was sucking it’s thumb on the sonogram.

My son was nursed when he wanted, he was held, he was given plenty of attention. How do you explain his autism? Autism has several risk factors that can not be controlled such as infection during second tri-semester of pregnancy, exposure to certian toxins, genetics, ect. Why don’t you go research RECENT information on autism and not the outdated stuff that used to claim it was caused by “refrigerator” mothers. If your theory were correct and any child who was allowed to suck on a pacifier or thumb or whatever would be autistic but they are not. There are co-morbid disorders with some of these children such as fragile-X, seisure disorder, auto-immune disorders, intestinal disoders, endocrine disorders, ect. Tell me are you perfect? Are your children perfect? Pointing blame at people is not going to solve anything. What happened to showing others empathy. Maybe this is something you lack and you have autistic tendancies yourself. Why don’t you do some in depth soul searching before you come here and try and make parents feel bad. I have a good relationship with all my children including my son who falls on the Autism spectrum. If I was uncaring and just wanted him to “shut-up” I never would of took the time to research and find ways of reaching him.

Thanks for the link. Will check out the article. However, shouldn’t parents be trying to wean their children from habits like thumb sucking rather than support it by providng an alternative? I have seen children aged two years and older who have a dent in their tongue from pacifiers and they are still seen in public with a pacifier stuck in their mouths. How do you know when to take away the pacifier? Wnen does the sucking urge end for these children? When does the weaning begin?

Steve, I do feel that some people let their children linger too long with both pacifiers and bottles. I got rid of both by the age of 12 months with my kids at the advice of the pediatrician. I have also seen 2 and 3 year olds whose parents said they could not get the child to give it up. Now in that case, the child was controlling the parent! However, I have not done any research into the sucking reflex so I can’t really give more info than my personal experience and the content of that article.

Janis

Janis - There wasn’t anything in the article that would convince me that pacifiers are a requirement for babies’ need to suck. There is reference to the fact that there is a disagreement about their use. The advice to check with your doctor if your child needs the pacificer beyond 6 or 8 months would indicate to me that the pacifier shouldn’t have been used in the first place but, rather, the real needs of the child should have been addressed. Pacifiers came into common use about 30 or so years ago. Before that time they were hardly heard of. Since there has been an increase in autism since pacifiers came into common use I was just inquiring as to whether there is a connection. My inquiry is made especially upon observation of mothers using pacifiers to “shut their babies up” when they are on a crying jag. Clearly you are not one of those parents but haven’t you seen pacifiers used for that purpose? Doesn’t it concern you to see pictures of parents holding babies with a piece of plastic crammed into their mouths? Sorry, but it concerns me.

Steve, I am pretty sure that before pacifiers, children sucked their thumbs. This was seen as more harmful to the teeth and a harder habit to stop. The pacifier can just be thrown away…uh-oh, pacy went bye-bye! I think I got rid of the pacifiers by the age of 9-10 months and at the same time weaned the babies over to cups. Our third child is adopted from China (we got her at age 6 months). She never had a pacifier. She also was bundled so heavily that she couldn’t reach her thumb to her mouth. I know this sounds very strange, but she sucked her tongue. She still does this when she is sleepy. You can say that she was certainly left in a crib and ignored the first 6 months of her life. She does have some mild auditory and visual processing problems but is nowhere even near autistic. So I guess my point is, babies cannot and should not be carried around 24 hours a day, and the sucking reflex is associated with them calming themselves. And I can personally testify to the fact that a baby who is given no pacifier or thumb will find a way to meet this need. I know of another Chinese baby who just sucked the edge of her blanket.

Janis

Dad sure would be useful about now don’t ya think?

Steve,
Look up Dad’s info, not a word about pacy’s anywhere, just scientific exploration. He’s the guy to talk to since I think you won’t take any mom’s words of experience. You may need to look on parenting board as well as this one.

By the way, do you have an autistic person in your life?

Amy

DOn’t give your kids pacifiers if you have ‘em, and let other parents make their parenting decisions while you do further research on autism. Do you have an autistic child that used a pacifier? (I have to wonder what Freud would have to say about it, b ut I digress :)))

… that based on his responses to the replies, that Steve is not here for learning more and the best response is to let things fade away rather than invest the energy in refuting what, to him, are irrefutable arguments.
Or, he could be a “troll” and the same thing applies.

Babies suck their thumbs because they discover there is pleasure in it. Male babies also find pleasure in stimulating other parts of their anatomy. But mothers don’t provide them with vibrators to assist them with this stimulation. Rather, they redirect their attention. But mouth stimulation is somehow encouraged. It just doesn’t make sense to me. I must say that you posters are very defensive and even resort to name calling. Therefore I bid you all farewell and wish you luck with your decisions with pacifiers.

nt

While the idea that a pacifier could trigger autism is at once intriguing and facetious, I just happened to be away fromt he boards for a couple days when this one hit.

This notion of pacifier = shut up and amuse yourself is actually just an extension of Bettleheim’s failed theorm of the “refrigerator mom”. Completely iscredited.

As some have noted here, and many other would attest, children with pacifiers in their mouths will still have plenty of interaction with adults around them, and will make all the right coos and gurggles as they begin vocalizing.

Children with autism on the other hand fall into two categories - those who are odd from the start (like my boy) whose autism is most likely a genetic susceptibility coupled with in utero exposure to a triggering agent, and those who develop typically (pacifier and all) until the age of about 15-18 mos. (coincidentally the time they receive the MMR) at which point some as yet unnamed event occurs which triggers their regression.

My boy w/ autism was the only one of my children who did NOT use a pacifier (he had a very strong aversion to oral contact of certain things, although he did not mind eating lots of dirt, etc.)

And as Linda astutely said, were pacifiers to blame, we would be up to our elbows in flappers now.

Current best estimate on prevalance - 6 per 1,000 core autism with half again as many HFA

Oh, perfect point! How about 90% of the population! lol!

Janis

That’s exactly my point. There *has* been an increase.

If pacifiers were truly at the heart of the meteoric rise in autism, then this would represent a learned behavior, some form of selective mutism. This MIGHT actually be plausible for the non-verbal children,but it doesn’t explain why stereotypic behaviors occur, why transition lock occurs, why autistic kids only have narrow areas of interet. Also, seeing how only 25% of autistic children are non-verbal, with a full 50% being fully able to talk and just having profound problems with social conversation and abstract language, selective mutism does nothing to explain the bulk of autism.

Recent developments have pointed to the inter-relation of gut problems to autism, many autistic kids have varying degrees of de-mylenation, and a great many if not most suffer from elevated levels of toxic metals. None of this can be attributed to pacifiers.

Finally, children have been using pacifiers for quiet a long time. They just weren’t commercially bought on a large scale until the last few decades, like so many other products. And even if it were something about the commercial pacifiers, considering the sale of these has been rather constant since they were introduced, why the steady increase now?

You make a good argument. My question was aimed at whether pacifiers might be a *contributing* factor. Children respond in differing ways to similar stimuli. My question was, “Could pacifiers lead some children to withdraw when, rather than to get the attention they seek, they have a piece of plastic shoved into their mouths?” As for chemical imbalances, perhaps excess sucking has chemical ramifications and-or sucking may alleviate hunger, which creates a nutrition imbalance. However, I make no pretense at being an expert in autism. It is just my *gut* feeling when I observe a parent forcing a pacifier into their child’s mouth rather than addressing its real needs that there’s going to be some fallout somewhere. It says to me, “shut them up now but pay later.” That leaves me with nothing more to say on this subject.

Steve,

Here is where I think you are wrong. A parent putting a pacifier in a baby’s mouth IS satisfying the baby’s REAL NEED to suck!!! You need to understand that a baby wants to suck on something many more hours a day than he would be hungry. If you fed a baby everytime he wanted to suck you would have one obese baby!!! And, as someone has already mentioned, there are ultrasound pictures of babies sucking their thumbs in utero, so this is a normal, natural human activity NOT related just to hunger.

I can only assume you have not yet had the experience of having an infant. I have already told you that if a baby does not have a pacifier, he will learn to suck his fingers or thumb. That is usually thought to be worse for the teeth/mouth formation as well as a harder habit to break.

Janis

Oh geeez, this is almost funny.

Don’t you love all the people that never had children who know so much about children. I still remember people who didn’t have children telling me that if I didn’t spank my son he would be spoiled. I always loved the advice from the non parents who just knew so much about being a parent.

Letting your baby - note babies - has nothing to do with “shutting them up.” Infants have little ability to calm themselves. Like it or not, “pacifiers” are aptly named. They become less necessary when other means of satisfaction and comfort become available to the baby. By the way, I haven’t noticed that mothers diverting baby boys from their genitalia has had much of an impact of boys habits in that area.